With songs by The Avett Brothers, Swept Away is impressed by the true story of an nineteenth century shipwreck by which seamen resorted to cannibalism to outlive.

Julieta Cervantes/Enviornment Stage

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Julieta Cervantes/Enviornment Stage

With songs by The Avett Brothers, Swept Away is impressed by the true story of an nineteenth century shipwreck by which seamen resorted to cannibalism to outlive.

Julieta Cervantes/Enviornment Stage

The musical Swept Away, set to songs by The Avett Brothers, acquired rave critiques when it premiered at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in early 2022. Now displaying at Enviornment Stage in D.C., it is garnering the identical type of consideration.

And with a forged and crew behind the manufacturing which have collectively received 9 Tony Awards, there’s hope the musical will head to Broadway.

From a ebook to an album to the stage

Within the early 2000s, Scott Avett’s dad advisable he learn Neil Hanson’s The Customized of the Sea, a real story a few shipwreck off the coast of Africa in 1884. Avett, who grew up in Harmony, N.C., says his dad “loves non-fiction survival tales and so this was a type of these books.”

Hanson recounts the horrific experiences of 4 males adrift in a dinghy for 19 days within the burning solar in the course of the ocean on the verge of hunger. In life or dying conditions, the “customized of the ocean” permitted sacrificing one to avoid wasting the remaining.

Stark Sands (L) and Adrian Blake Enscoe play brothers in Swept Away, a brand new musical that includes songs by the Avett Brothers.

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Stark Sands (L) and Adrian Blake Enscoe play brothers in Swept Away, a brand new musical that includes songs by the Avett Brothers.

Julieta Cervantes/Enviornment Stage

As Hanson explains, Captain Tom Dudley made the choice to kill the weakest amongst them. Once they have been lastly rescued, he informed the reality after which stood trial for homicide. Dudley’s “misfortune was that the British authorities have been decided to outlaw the customized of the ocean and his honesty gave them their likelihood, and so they bent and even broke the legislation to take action,” says Hanson in an e-mail.

Scott Avett says he was moved by the captain’s honesty, regardless that it meant confessing to a heinous act, “As a result of on the finish…though the reality was the appropriate factor, it was going to be a explanation for struggling.”

Greater than a decade after The Avett Brothers’ 2004 album Mignonette was launched, they acquired a name proposing to show it right into a musical. “It made excellent sense as a result of I visualize this stuff as complete tales,” Avett says.

There are some key variations between the story of the Mignonette and the musical. Amongst different issues, the whaling ship sinks off the coast of New Bedford, Mass. The character who first proposes killing an ailing crew member is named merely the “Mate.”

In contrast to Captain Dudley, the Mate would not imagine in God and admits he is lead a lifetime of sin. He sings The Avett Brothers’ tune “Devil Pulls The Strings.” Against this, the character Massive Brother is deeply non secular and sings the one tune the Avetts wrote particularly for the present, “Lord Lay Your Hand On My Shoulder.”

‘Swept Away’ constructed from items of The Avett Brothers’ total catalogue

In Swept Away, the Mate, performed by Tony successful actor John Gallagher, Jr., is haunted by the sins of his previous.

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In Swept Away, the Mate, performed by Tony successful actor John Gallagher, Jr., is haunted by the sins of his previous.

Julieta Cervantes/Enviornment Stage

John Logan, whose credit embrace the flicks Skyfall and Gladiator and successful a Tony Award for Purple, was introduced in to craft the story out of The Avett Brothers’ songs. He was thrilled to deal with huge themes like redemption and forgiveness, and says: “I hope Swept Away says to the viewers, ‘What would you do in the event you have been one among these 4 males on this lifeboat after 21 days?'”

Logan knew a few of The Avett Brothers’ music however says he now pored over their total catalogue.

“I used to be simply struck by the poetry of their lyrics, by the depth of the music, and by the best way they might discover completely different characters via songs and that is what musicals do,” he recounts. “I went to them and I mentioned, ‘Look, are you able to give me permission to make use of any of your songs? And in the event you don’t love how I am utilizing them, we’ll talk about it. And so they mentioned, ‘Nice.'”

Actor and singer Adrian Blake Enscoe performs Little Brother in Swept Away. He is additionally within the indie-folk-pop-americana group Bandits On The Run. He says The Avett Brothers’ catalogue is “unimaginable for this story of morality and mortality, wrestling with darkness and lightweight and religion and what’s my that means.”

When Scott Avett first noticed the manufacturing on stage, “I assumed, ‘These guys can sing manner higher than me,'” he laughs. “They’ve extra management than I will ever have and I feel it is lovely.”

‘Nothing that’s human is alien to me’

In Swept Away, the Mate is haunted by his sins. Actor and singer Stark Sands, who performs Massive Brother, believes the musical’s themes of reckoning with the reality and looking for forgiveness proceed to plague humanity.

“I feel that proper now we’re residing at a time when there are some individuals who do not need to face the previous,” Sands says. “They do not need to acknowledge the kind of terrible issues that we have now carried out as a race, as a nation… This man that we’re following within the story, the Mate, he is carried out some horrible issues that he admits to over the course of the play and all we’re asking him to do is simply say them out loud.”

For John Logan, Swept Away is about having empathy for all, together with “those that have sinned.” Over his laptop are the phrases: “Nothing that’s human is alien to me,” a translation of a well-known quote that’s linked to the Roman playwright Terence however has been utilized by the thinker Seneca and others subsequently.

“So once I take a look at the actions of the Mate on this story, I say he is a human being identical to I’m, and I am able to the identical exaltation, the identical pleasure, the identical degradation, and the identical violence, as a result of nothing that’s human is alien to me,” he says.

This story was edited for broadcast and digital by Meghan Collins Sullivan and produced for radio by Isabella Gomez-Sarmiento.